L.A. schools chief vows to use evaluation data to help teachers

L.A. schools chief Ramon C. Cortines talked about revamping teacher evaluations as a tool for helping teachers improve as part of his final, annual address to administrators Wednesday morning at Hollywood High School.

Overall, the 30-minute speech celebrated progress at various schools, including Hollywood High, and challenged educators to do more.

During his remarks, Cortines emphasized that the nation's second-largest school district plans to develop and adopt a “value-added” measure that uses students test scores to determine individual teachers' and schools' effectiveness. This data should be part of a multifaceted evaluation for teachers, he said.

The value-added method has become a central topic in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the wake of a Times series on the subject. The Times also plans to publish a database later this month containing the value-added rating for about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers. The newspaper found that the school district had the ability to do such an analysis but, like other school systems, never did so.
 
“It is critical that we look at multiple measures to support our employees,” Cortines said, and “how value added fits into our overall strategy.”

The district plans on publishing such data about schools “once this information has been validated,” he said.  Moreover, such efforts should be developed in partnership with employee bargaining units. “Supporting all employees is about creating a culture of collaboration and trust.”

Cortines supported teachers by quoting a Polytechnic High school custodian who talked about how teachers were on campus when he arrived to work and still working when he left for the day.

Cortines -- who plans to retire in 2011 -- lost his composure near the end of his address as he thanked those assembled for the opportunity to work with them. A packed auditorium, that included parents, district officials and community leaders rose for a 45-second ovation as school board president Monica Garcia rushed to the microphone to proclaim Cortines the nation’s best superintendent.

The superintendent also defended the new Robert F. Kennedy complex of six schools built on the site of the Ambassador Hotel at a cost approaching $600 million. He then remarked on his age by noting that he first visited the old hotel when Adlai Stevenson was running for president. His second visit to the hotel, he said, was a youthful streaking episode with some friends. On a second such jaunt, at a different hotel, Cortines said, police collared him and called his father to collect him.

The confession drew extended, warm applause and some uncomfortable chuckles from the largely buttoned-up crowd of more than 1,000.

In a later interview, Cortines talked about California’s unsuccessful bid to win a federal Race to the Top school improvement grant. Cortines had been part of California’s five-member delegation to present the state’s bid. He noted that federal evaluators grilled him on whether his district could obtain union consent for a teacher-evaluation process that includes linking student data to individual teachers. He told federal officials he was confident that the union could be won over to such a plan. He also said the district would take advantage of rules for the next round of funding that would likely allow L.A. Unified to apply directly to the federal government rather than part of a state effort.

Just after his address, the diminutive, 78-year-old superintendent demonstrated that his impending departure is unrelated to physical fitness. He nimbly and swiftly lowered himself off the stage -- a 4 1/2-foot drop -- landing on his feet unharmed among a bank of plants, where well-wishers mobbed him for hugs and photos.

School board member Steve Zimmer called Cortines' expression of emotion “a remarkably pure moment from someone who did not have to take this job except for his lifelong passion for kids and their families.  We won’t get another moment like this because there’s not another person like him.”

-- Howard Blume

Photo: L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon Cortines. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[LAUSD teacher]

Oh it's just like 1984.

We don't need any help based on test scores. We are the ones who stay in the classroom year after year, unlike the out of classroom teachers who make much more money and think they are God's gift.

We do need more practically based education for our students. The continual red herring of test scores means the focus is all on teachers and not on student needs- student needs to widen the curriculum that includes field work, travel and service not test prep.

We know you just want Race to the Top Money

[joe]

Good ol' Ray Cortines! One of the finest (formerly of Scholastic Books ) we've had!

This is the man responsible for the mini district plan that saved sooo much money! This is the man of ethics and character righting the corrupt bureaucracy! (while of course hypocritically lining his pockets with Scholastic money and others whom he deals with)

This man is no saint. .. he has you all fooled but you are unwilling to really investigate. Why?

The Times does a good job exposing teachers, what about these administrators? They are some of the highest paid in the nation and yet least effective. The Times needs to dig deeper and listen to the calls for investigation.

[reno]

oh yeah baby! that's what I'm talking about, Ramon Cortines also known as Charles Montgomery Burns. His pockets are full, and now he is going to pull pension from California and invest privately in Sholastic and the other contractors who he paved the way into LAUSD.

[ARD]

BEWARE OF THE NEXT SUPERINTENDENT. READ ON. The roots of American education can be found in the necessity of cultivating a widely literate constituency (voters) in order to create a functioning Democracy (government) to effectively police and manage our mandated decision-makers (elected officials) so we may grow as a free and energetic nation. One of the few governmental mandates actually indirectly stitched into this design of our nation was the creation and maintenance of public schools to fulfill the structural need for informed and literate voters. Therefore, the governmental framework that houses our market-driven, capitalist-based society has to include public schools. Although this framework, by design, was intended to be spare and utilitarian in order to enable the open market to flourish, public education would become a major social/political pillar of the USA governmental structure, and it remains so today. The responsibility of sustaining this pillar, however, is a foundational linchpin to a healthy Democracy, and although other goods and services will be provided in the American economic system when the market thrives in a loose framework, we cannot rely on the market alone to deliver something as critical as basic education to our children. There is both a rhyme and a reason to our governmental support of public education, although it may be difficult to identify sometimes. A new and dangerous group of economic beasts has emerged recently, however, to challenge the governmental commitment to public schools and test government fortitude in defending their fortress Democracy. These beasts are national and sometimes global corporations that operate in our free markets and have amassed countless piles of money and now have their bulging eyes fixed on the large chunks of government money spent to support our linchpin – public education. Why can’t we simply form businesses to operate schools, they say, and via some healthy American-style competition, we can sharpen the product that is delivered, and in turn, sharpen the student product that is generated. What they fail to mention, however, is that not all American families can or will choose to purchase lifeblood education once it is abandon by the government and left to corporations to supply. Let’s see, food bill, cable bill, internet bill, school bill…? Mommy needs internet more than little Joey needs school. Done. The tax dollars that once went to public school districts will fill the coffers of these companies, but few will escape into the classroom to be used on teachers and students. Most will line the pockets of the non-educator pirates that have thrown acid on our Democratic American superstructure. It all fits in a twisted way because free market deregulation – another linchpin of our American heritage – has led to the rapacious nature of these corporations. Now, they have grown to the point where they are hungrily gnawing on the edges of the nation’s foundational framework, and the defenders of the building, our elected officials who have shown they are incapable of fighting them off, have jumped on the monsters back and beginning to chew themselves. Our elected school officials in LAUSD are engaged in cannibalism – biting off the taxpayer hand that feeds them. Sure, invite the wolf to the sheep’s party. We know how that one turned out. Sure, invite John Deasy – who works for the world’s 15th largest corporation – to become the new leader of the nations’ second largest PUBLIC school district. Good luck with that.

[RhodaRyder]

Cortines has made lots of money off his high salary and all the perks and paybacks he gets for sitting on boards of instructional conglomerates to convince school board members to buy the Read 180 or other such stuff. Blaming teachers is the way school administrators distract from their own failure to support the education of kids. Over $77 million went to pay for ed. consultants because administrators like Cortines had no clue into how to educate kids. The corruption at the top is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

[The Catholic school model has worked for years.]

All through out industry and other work places emploees are paid for performance. But, for some ungodly reason the UTLA head thinks teachers should not be held accountable. There (the teacher) job is to teach students, and that obviously is not working. Among many other solutions teachers must be paid for performance and fired for lack of. We are wasting our tax dollars on the on-going system in place.
The taxpayers in California should revolt-billions of dollars are going down the drain because of the kind of people who are running the school boards-they lacka clear understanding of the problem and are not willing to mange the situation properly.

[Where is the leadership?]

Here we go again-I am sure the new head of L.A. schools will be like the 3 previous one's. What choice do we have with a school board as screwed up as this one. They lack integrity, have little if no insight and are very biased in there decision making.

[Ezequiel]

You know it's amazing how these people get away with this stuff. I don't know why he had to bring up his streaking episode. And the waste going into building RFK is outrageous and doesn't seem to bother anyone. We should just let the district waste another $600 million on another school. They don't know how to manage. Their budget alone is about $7 billion.

[reno]

"Excellent! Smithers take over LAUSD and fire those teachers who will not take a paycut."-Montgomery Burns